The Nazi Party

The Nazi Party

During the 1930s, the Nazi Regime attempted to construct what it believed to be a utopian society. The Nazis’ rise to power can be viewed as a modern revolution, in which their objective to create an ideal Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (community of people) was achieved by highly regulating all areas of German life. From the arts and literature to sexual activity and race relations, the Nazi Party implemented legislation that restricted what the German public could see, hear, read, do and even think! The Nazis were able to maintain control over the masses through propaganda, codified and unwritten values, and destructive actions (Night of Broken Glass) that actually determined the conditions under which individuals had to live. The Nazi Party ensured its own strength and continuance not only through legal measures (such as eliminating other parties) but also by shaping a society that excluded certain groups from having political influence, particularly women and Jews. Adolf Hitler, chancellor of the Third Reich, gives two speeches that exemplify the Nazis’ efforts to separate and even remove women and Jews from public life and discourage them from participating politically. In the first speech, given on 8 September 1934, Hitler addresses the National Socialist Women’s section and expresses the Nazi opinion that a woman’s most fundamental role is a domestic one and her proper place is in her home. On 30 January 1937, Hitler gives a speech in Berlin concerning the importance of racial purity and ultimately the omission of Jews from German life. Although these two speeches are in many ways explicitly different, they share a number of intriguing similarities. I will argue that these similarities are not merely coinc...

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...gitimacy of separation based on racial disparities. Hence, gender goes from a term signaling the two sexes, male and female, to a complex standard indicating that a line must be drawn between groups of individuals if one of these groups is perceived as different and potentially disruptive. After years of oppression and racial cleansing, Nazism was eventually destroyed by forces perhaps not determined by nature but certainly governed by humanity.

Works Cited

“Hitler’s Speech to the National Socialist Women’s Section” in Laws and Orders: Humanities and the Regulation of Society. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2002. p. 276-277.

“Racial Purity: Hitler Reverts to the Dominant Theme of the National Socialist Program” in Laws and Orders: Humanities and the Regulation of Society. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2002. p. 274-275.